Monday, February 20, 2006

Paul Avrich was an outstanding historian who specialized in anarchism. I read several of his books on Russian anarchism years ago and recommend them highly. Just this last year, I was lucky enough to find his history of Haymarket at a used bookstore. It is essential--and enjoyable--reading for anyone interested in American labor and radical history.

Radical historian, Paul Avrich, died last week. He was 74. Paul Avrich was born in New York City on August 4, 1931. He was a noted historian and professor who authored many books on anarchist history, including books on the Haymarket Riot, the Modern School Movement, the Russian Revolution and a collection of oral interviews with American anarchists titled Anarchist Voices. Avrich was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize several times and in 1984 he won the Philip Taft Labor History Award.

Avrich received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1952 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1961. Avrich taught at Queens College of the City University of New York and at Columbia University. He was a Guggenheim fellow at Columbia University in 1967-68 and a National Endowment for the Humanities senior fellow in 1972-73.

Avrich published his dissertation on "The Russian Revolution and the Factory Committees" at Columbia University in 1961. In 1967 Avrich published his first book on the history of anarchism, "The Russian Anarchists." He went on to publish many more books on anarchist history, including "The Haymarket Tragedy" in 1984 and "Sacco and Vanzetti" in 1991. Writing about Avrich's book "Kronstadt 1921" for the New York Review of Books, Alasdair MacIntyre observed that "[Avrich] gives us the closest examination of all the available evidence that we are likely to have for some time and he uses his evidence to construct a narrative that, in its most brilliant passages, matches the power of Deutscher's The Prophet Armed and Moshe Lewin's Lenin's Last Struggle."

The Library of Congress houses the Paul Avrich Collection, a collection of over twenty thousand manuscripts and publications on American and European anarchism that Avrich donated to the library.

Ronald Creagh remembered Avrich this weekend: ".I know that Paul's friendliness will remain in the minds of all who have known him, just as his scholarship will be remembered by all who have read his remarkable books. He offers his readers very extraordinary information. Perhapshis most thought-provoking testimony is contained in his work Anarchist Voices, which is based on his careful, time-consuming interviews with hundreds of people."